Tired of seeing Facebook ads that aren’t relevant to you? Now you can not only opt out of ads from that company, but you can also see why the ad was shown to you in the first place.
This week Facebook started rolling out a new “Why Am I Seeing This Ad?” feature that offers a bit more transparency into why a particular ad might be showing up in your feed, Buzzfeed reports.
Originally teased in April, the tool explains why an ad is being shown to you specifically and also gives you information about how it came to be in your feed, for instance, whether it was posted by an ad agency or a data broker. There’s also information in the report on how to opt out.
To see the info, you have to click on the three dots at the top-right side of an ad and then select “Why am I seeing this ad?” from the drop-down menu.
From there you can ask to opt out of all ads from that particular advertiser, or take things a step further and ask to opt out of seeing ads that are targeting you based on websites and apps off Facebook.
You can tweak all of your ad preferences on Facebook by going to Settings followed by Account Settings, and then Ads.
The “Ad Settings” section will allow you to opt out of ads based on data from partners ads based on your activity on Facebook Company Products that you see elsewhere. You can also opt out of having your name associated with an ad shown to your friends. For instance, an ad for The Chapel, a local music venue in San Francisco, might say “Emily Price likes The Chapel” above it when it’s shown to my friends. The idea, of course, being that your friends will be more likely to be interested in that ad because you have, in a way, endorsed it.
Facebook also offers information about which advertisers have uploaded lists to Facebook with your info included on it. For us, that list was almost exclusively businesses we’ve never heard of, which made it a pretty enlightening (and also a bit depressing) read.
Sadly, there’s still no “opt out of all ads” button. That said, it’s a good idea to check out your ad preferences on a regular basis, in general, to make sure everything there is something you’re comfortable with or at least something you’re willing to tolerate.
